The Civic Education Crusade: A Heretic’s Analysis

Excerpt

In January 2012, the National Task Force on Civic Learning and National Engagement of the Association of American Universities and Colleges released its report, A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future. The report called for a program of civic learning and of training in civic engagement that would pervade every aspect of higher education. This program would be linked to similar efforts at all other levels of schooling. In the words of the report, “[t]he central work of advancing civic learning and democratic engagement in higher education must, of course, be done by faculty members across disciplines, by student affairs professionals across divisions, and by administrators in every school and at every level. The fourth prominent group of actors are the students themselves [bold in the original]. The collective work of these groups should be guided by a shared sense that civic knowledge and democratic engagement, in concert with others and in the face of contestation, are absolutely vital to the quality of intellectual inquiry itself, to this nation’s future, and to preparation for life in a diverse world” (p. 2). It called for fostering “a civic ethos across all parts of campus and educational culture” (p. 31) (See: http://​www.​aacu.​org/​civic_​learning/​crucible/​documents/​crucible_​508F.​pdf). …